


we are made of stardust and ancient song

by obfuscatress



Category: Bridget Jones's Baby, Bridget Jones's Diary - All Media Types
Genre: Birth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-06
Updated: 2016-10-06
Packaged: 2018-08-19 21:05:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8224760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obfuscatress/pseuds/obfuscatress
Summary: Creating life has never been an easy feat.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Breathe Me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8211358) by [Regency](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Regency/pseuds/Regency). 



There are certain things in life one must to do by themselves, and Bridget knows this is one. She is loathe to believe it, pain and doubt and exhaustion nagging at her. She has Mark Darcy in a vice grip still, bleeding where her pain became his to endure, waiting for her to say the word. He would stay if she asked him to, but this is not a problem he can solve for her. Her son, her labour.

There are such few precious moments left between contractions for her now. It’s just enough time to register the look of sympathy on Dr Rawlings’ face and Bridget is grateful that she is the one to gently usher Mark away, because the only thing stuck in the back of her throat is a scream. Bridget feels her muscles drawing together again, furious, and it takes all the strength she has to uncurl her fingers and let go of Mark’s hand.

She has to do this without him. She has done this without him so far. The last mile seems endless, her heart beating frantically against Dr Rawlings’s cool index finger on her wrist. Bridget feels like she is on fire.

“Time for the grand finale,” Dr Rawlings says cheerfully and Bridget lets out some horrifically ineloquent sound that’s half desperation and half relief.

But the language of this pain is universal, her moans those of women for thousands of years before her, and she can make herself understood. She has long surpassed any arsenal of curse words in the English language, any entries in the Oxford dictionary fall short now. Bridget dissolves into a scream and fists the sheets with damp hands as the nurses come in.

The pressure within her pelvis is becoming unbearable, like her world has inverted itself to wrap around a pivot point. There is something archaic about it, a seismic event waiting to happen. Bridget thinks of volcanic pressure, of fire and brimstone, the way diamonds are forged from nothing more than coal.

She’s shaking as her legs find a foothold in stirrups - also cold, only because she is aflame and brimming with life, quite literally - and she finds the railings of the hospital bed to grip onto. For a moment Bridget is convinced she is going to throw up or pass out, seized by another brutal contraction that seems to have merged into the one before and the one that has yet to come.

They become a singular entity, a force of its own and, when she is finally told to push, it comes easy, her body already convulsing with all its might. She is burning so bright, all sweat and blotchy expanses of skin, a raw moan ripping itself from her. This is how all things living are made. Supernovae and entire universes. She bears down and wills the divergence of a life force into two.

Nothing has ever hurt so much - not heartbreak and not broken bones - and yet nothing has ever come so close to touching her to the very core. After all, her child is the centre she gravitates around in more ways than one. He’s been her physical centre of gravity for months, and she owes him every last drop of her perseverance.

Bridget has lived nearly forty-four years to bring him into this world and it is bound to  _ hurt _ . She can feel his head pushing through her birth canal. It’s slow progress, the ebb and flow of the tide, and she cries tears out of an ancient ocean as she makes the final effort to get him out into the world. It ignites her insides, an unbearable burn making her push even harder, because there’s a point so far gone there is no way out but through, and so she tucks her chin to her chest and tastes blood.

Then there’s the tearing, something fast and yet endlessly slow, her own flesh parting to give way for her son’s. She splits in half to to make the two of them, but then he is out: disgruntled and grimy, but whole, and Bridget cries out with him.

She can barely make him out through her tears, glimpses of towels and silver instruments filtering through her waterlogged vision. There are two of them now, him with all his confusion and her with the last of her labour pains and a profound hollowness where she used to carry him within her being.

Bridget holds him close, her own blood between her hands and his head sealing them together. This is all  _ her _ doing. They are made of  _ her _ determination, of the heat of the heart of the earth, of rain and disaster and sheer force of will. For a while he will be her son and hers only. She catches her breath and welcomes him.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr at obfuscatress.tumblr.com or on twitter @shippress.


End file.
